


Family recipe

by cnaught



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, I guess this is an AU because, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Otabek is very unhappy, Yuri expresses every emotion through swearing, rated for language, writing this made me sad and angry and also hungry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 09:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13714950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cnaught/pseuds/cnaught
Summary: The kitchen was always Grandad’s domain. Maybe that’s why Yuri almost subconsciously thinks of it as a comforting place.Fuck it, he figures. It’s worth a shot.Otabek has a very bad morning. Yuri tries to help.





	1. Family recipe

It’s not unusual for Yuri to wake up alone. Even on rest days, or on what passes for vacation (that is, traveling _just_ for sponsorship meetings or charity events rather than actual work), Otabek has never been able to shake the training that pulls him out of sleep early, regardless of the length of the night before. He’s tried to explain that he likes the early mornings: the quiet feeling of time just for himself, like the world is holding its breath before the day really starts. He’s an alien with fucked up sleep patterns and Yuri will never understand him. But it’s fine, because it means that when Yuri wakes up the coffee is already made, and Beka is there to laugh at his sleepy grumbling and do his hair. (Waking early all the time also means there’s about a fifty percent chance that, if there’s time, he’ll want to nap in the middle of the day, which is so fucking cute it’s actually infuriating.)

So, waking up alone: normal. Fine.

What’s not normal or fine is when he wakes up alone, pads barefoot into the living room, and finds Otabek muttering into his phone in a rapid, tense stream of Kazakh.

Yuri stops in the doorway, hangs back, not really out of a sense of respecting privacy (because what even is that, between them) but because he still doesn’t quite know how he’s supposed to handle this kind of thing. Otabek looks at Yuri, sees him, but doesn’t seem to notice, the voice on the other end of the line keeping his attention elsewhere. (Another layer of not normal. Otabek has _always_ noticed Yuri.) Yuri doesn’t know how long Beka has been awake, how long he has been on the phone, but he is already clearly upset; his shoulders are bowed in around the phone pressed to his ear, like he’s trying to curl up defensively while clutching a grenade. Yuri can’t watch. He steps past Otabek into the kitchen.

There’s no coffee. Yuri tries to think.

They’re good at not talking about things. Yuri finds the quiet refreshing, after spending so long around Viktor “Feeeeeelings” Nikiforov, but it tends to make a situation like this uniquely difficult.

When Yuri’s overwhelmed, it’s all in his body; he needs to skate, or train, or fight, or fuck, to work through it physically, to tame his emotions into something manageable. For Otabek, it gets stuck in his head, and he’ll be stuck in there with it until he can figure it out.

And like Yuri sometimes needs to be locked out of the ballet studio, Otabek needs a tether to keep him grounded while his hindbrain hammers whatever-it-is into a comprehensible shape; something for his hands to do that won’t ask too much from his mind. Mixing tracks is his go-to for day-to-day decompression. During the first year that they’d lived together, after the novelty wore off and they had to actually figure out how to share their spaces and deal with each other full time, Otabek had disassembled and rebuilt every part of his motorbike engine, piece by piece, one for each time they’d argued.

Yuri doesn’t have an engine to set in front of him now. What he has is Beka’s voice, drifting in from the other room, sharp and tight like something that’s in the process of shattering.

It’s too fucking early for this. Three hours ahead in Kazakhstan. He wonders if whoever is on the phone knows that they ruined Beka’s favorite time of day.

Yuri puts the kettle on, and when he turns back to measure out the coffee his eyes light on a portrait of Nikolai, taped to the fridge. The kitchen was always Grandad’s domain. Maybe that’s why Yuri almost subconsciously thinks of it as a comforting place.

Fuck it, he figures. It’s worth a shot. He pulls out flour, yeast, measuring cups, the big mixing bowl.

Later, the dough is mixed and resting between burners on the stove, Yuri’s had a cup and a half of coffee, and he feels … not better, but at least that he maybe has the resources to try to handle this.

He’s been half-listening to Otabek in the other room: erratic pacing, tone that varies between strangled fury and choked anguish, and words that Yuri doesn’t understand. He’s never learned much Kazakh; Otabek didn’t push it, saying he feels just as comfortable in Russian, and Yuri has never yet met a Kazakhstani who wouldn’t rather converse intelligibly in Yuri’s language than patiently listen to Yuri stammer and stumble through his limited grasp of theirs. He’s picked up a little bit — common, useful phrases like _please_ and _thank you_ , _good morning_ , _where is the train station_ , _I love you sweetheart, fuck me harder_ — but far from enough to follow a conversation at native speed.

He recognizes the word for “goodbye.” The silence afterward, like a scream.

Yuri takes a deep breath and steps out.

Otabek is standing in the middle of the room, at an oblique angle to Yuri’s view. Yuri can see the knotted line of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw. He stares at the phone in his hand like he is seriously considering throwing it against the furthest wall. (It would be a funny image — it’s such a Yuri thing to do — if it wasn’t so unfunny, such a profoundly un-Otabek thing to do.)

“Hey,” Yuri says. Otabek _flinches_. Fucking Christ. “You hungry?”

Otabek continues to stare at the phone, then abruptly drops it. “No.” His empty hand clenches at his side.

“Okay. Help me cook anyway.” It’s almost a question. Yuri turns and walks back into the kitchen, not waiting for Otabek to follow.

Yuri starts pulling out ingredients, spices, oil, and lines them up on the counter. When Otabek appears in the doorway Yuri makes no outward show of victory; he just puts an onion in Otabek’s hand and points to the cutting board. “Chop it fine, please.” Otabek looks at everything for a minute, like he doesn’t remember what onions or knives or hands are for. Then he picks up the knife, and with careful, deliberate motions he slices the root end off of the onion and starts to peel it.

They work like that, in near-silence, for a time that feels longer than it is. Otabek’s movements are a bit slow, but precise, hyper-focused like trying to walk without aggravating an injury, all attention on peripheral movements and the tenuous absence of pain. Yuri chews his lip, and keeps handing him things to chop. Garlic, cabbage, carrots, mushrooms. Grandad told him, ages ago, that you can use basically anything if you chop it up well enough. Meanwhile Yuri tends the skillet, meat sizzling as it cooks and as he adds each new chopped ingredient.

They don’t exchange a word, besides Yuri giving instructions (“Wash those first.” “Squish it with the flat part before you — yeah, you got it.” “Finer than that. Okay, perfect.”) until the meat mixture is done and set aside and Yuri brings out the dough. He glances into the bowl, grimaces. Ideally it should have more time to rise, but _fuck_ if he is going to sit and wait with nothing to do — and more importantly, nothing for Beka to do. As soon as he’d run out of things to chop he’d lapsed into just standing there, vacant, his normally sharp, perceptive eyes focused on nothing. It sets Yuri’s teeth on edge. So, maybe the dough won’t get to rise enough, maybe it’ll be tough, what _ever_ , none of that matters. Yuri thrusts the bowl at Otabek, muttering “Hold this,” and starts scattering flour on the counter. “Do you want to roll it out, or should I?”

Otabek is gazing impassively into the pale, pasty dough. His eyes lift and drag over to the meat in the skillet. Recognition sparks distantly, a glint at the bottom of a deep well. “Piroshki,” he rumbles.

“Yeah.” Yuri pulls out the rolling pin from the bottom of a drawer. He turns back to Otabek, sees something flicker across his face, twist in his brow and the corner of his mouth. Yuri can’t parse it; he wonders if this is what Beka’s normal face looks like to those idiots who don’t know him, who call him stoic and unexpressive.

“Is that your solution for everything?” Otabek’s voice is dull, cold.

Yuri bites back the first harsh retort that rises to his tongue. Noted: even Otabek Altin, prince among men, can be a bit of a dick when he’s hurt. Yuri breathes in, out; he seizes the bowl of dough from Otabek’s hand and spills it out onto the floured counter.

“I don’t know about ‘solution,’” Yuri says carefully, when the impulse to shout has mostly receded. “I think it can help. It’s helped me.” He holds out the rolling pin between them, a question.

This expression is easy to parse: regret, aching misery. A face like that makes apology redundant. (Later, Otabek will apologize anyway, because that’s who he is.) Otabek takes the rolling pin and starts to work the lump of dough, and in any other circumstance Yuri would appreciate the roll of his muscled shoulders, the strength in his forearms and in the palms of his hands. Yuri chooses a mug with a wide, round rim, and starts heating oil in the big tall-sided pot.

Pinching the round dough closed around the filling takes patience and deft fingers; Yuri is faster at it, but Beka does all right. They don’t talk, and the silence doesn’t feel like it’s going to crush all the air out of Yuri’s lungs. When the oil is hot enough, Yuri starts frying while Otabek keeps forming dumplings, his blunt fingers working carefully, until he’s used all the dough. He brings the tray of raw piroshki to within Yuri’s reach, and then retreats to watch him work.

His stillness makes Yuri uneasy — Yuri can’t tell if it’s the same disturbing emptiness as before, and he’s starting to run out of things for Beka to _do_. “You could clean up the flour,” he suggests, a little distracted because he doesn’t know if he should be focusing on the hissing, spitting vat of hot oil on the stove in front of him, or on the silent maelstrom leaning his hip against the counter a few steps away.

Otabek takes a minute to absorb and process the idea. Then he murmurs “Okay,” and reaches for some paper towel to wipe down the counter.

He goes a step further, setting a plate lined with clean paper towel next to the stove, just in time to receive the first batch of perfectly fried golden piroshki. “Thank you,” Yuri mumbles.

Around the third batch, Otabek says, “My cousin is getting married.”

“Oh.” Yuri tries to keep his tone neutral. (Real marriage, he knows Beka means. Official, sanctioned-by-the-state-and-religion marriage, the kind that the two of them will probably never have in either of their countries.) “Which one?”

“Sholpan.” Beka’s mouth is twisted at the corner, in what’s maybe supposed to be a wry smile. “I don’t know if you met her. She’s … about five years younger. Sweet kid.”

It doesn’t matter if Yuri has met her; he wasn’t able to pick out individuals from the roving horde of Altin cousins even before they all stopped speaking to him. “Are you close?”

Beka’s shoulder moves, indefinite. “I used to look after her and her brothers sometimes, before I went abroad.”

That was more than ten years ago. “Now?” Yuri asks, and he could mean anything. Now that you’re not kids anymore—? Now that you’re an internationally recognized figure skater—? Now that you’re out to your family, in a public gay relationship, and they’ve practically disowned you—?

The twist goes deeper. It really doesn’t look at all like a smile.

“She invited me,” Beka says quietly. “That’s something.”

“Oh.” Yuri busies himself with turning the piroshki. That is something. Or, it could be.

And he waits. Because none of this happened from speaking with sweet cousin Sholpan who invited Beka to her wedding.

Yuri is scooping the piroshki out of the oil, thinking he’ll need a fresh plate soon, when Beka speaks again. “Mom thinks I shouldn’t go.”

Yuri’s knuckles tighten on the slotted spoon. Of _fucking_ course it was Otabek’s mother. She has a unique talent for finding the spots that will truly hurt him, and digging in.

Eventually Yuri unclenches his teeth, and says, “It isn’t her fucking choice, is it.” He can’t filter all the anger out of his tone, but he tries; he knows Beka doesn’t need to hear it.

“I know.” Beka is rubbing the hem of his sleeve. He looks tired, like all the tension that held him rigid an hour ago has started to curdle in his body. “I haven’t decided.”

Yuri has always been strong-willed (some would say _a holy terror_ ), and he lives for the dramatic fuck-you gesture. He knows exactly what he would do. But it isn’t his decision any more than it’s hers. If Otabek wants Yuri’s opinion, he’ll ask for it.

And honestly, Yuri knows he can’t understand where Beka is coming from. He’s never had family; just Grandad, and the sometimes claustrophobic certainty that they are each other’s whole world. Beka has always been carrying around this crowd, the sense of context as innate to him as his blood. He wears it on his face (Grandpa Nursultan’s jawline, Aunt Bibigul’s nose, his dad’s tendency to scowl when he’s nervous) and he holds it in deeper places, such that even when he was alone on the other side of the planet he kept a vital sense of the home he aimed to return to, the people for whom he was determined and obligated to do well.

Otabek is serious about everything, always, and this most of all: he loves his family. They are so important to him.

Yuri used to envy him for that.

He is pulling out the last batch of piroshki — he never did get himself a fresh plate, so these become the capstones of a dangerously uneven pyramid — when Beka sighs and heaves himself off the counter, rubbing his eyes with the round of his hand like some spell has been broken. “I need to shower,” he grumbles.

“What, you’re not even going to help me eat these?” Yuri gestures with the spoon as he turns off the burner, sets the oil aside to cool.

“Still not hungry.” Beka’s lip quirks. _That_ looks a little wry. “Also, it’s like ten in the morning, Yura. Too early for fried food.”

“Too —?” Yuri tilts his head in pantomime confusion. “Beka, you’re not making any sense.”

He’s definitely an alien. But, an alien with the ghost of a genuine smile wafting past his face, for just a moment, before he goes solemn again.

He speaks softly, careful now as he wasn’t earlier. “Yura, thank you. It does help.”

He turns to go.

“Hey,” Yuri gapes, urgent, although he hasn’t quite lined up what he wants to say next.

_Stop taking her calls. It kills me to see you like this._

_Please look me in the eye just once._

_All I want is for you to be okay._

Otabek is waiting.

Yuri says, “You know that I love you, right?”

Otabek turns, reacting to Yuri’s pull like the tide. He looks at Yuri, finally, and there is so much in his face that if Yuri was a lesser man he might have reeled from it: shame and bitterness and miles-deep sadness, uncertainty, desperate fear, all overlaid with a tentative budding trace of warmth. ( _Stoic and unexpressive_. People are so fucking stupid.)

“Yeah,” Beka says, and for an instant Yuri is so goddamned furious he can’t breathe. Beka is _amazing_. He is brilliant, fierce, tenacious, _strong_. There shouldn’t be anything in the fucking world that can make him feel as small and desolate as he sounded just then. “Yeah, I know,” he’s saying, in that same fragile break-your-fucking-heart tone. “Uh.” He flushes, looks away. “Tell me again anyway?”

“I love you,” Yuri says instantly, as easy and natural as breath. He reaches out, hesitates — sometimes if there’s too much going on in his head Beka won’t want to be touched — but Beka leans in, so Yuri closes the distance and gathers him up, wraps his arms around him. “I love you.” His gangly elbows stick out at weird angles as he presses Beka close, his fingers curled in Beka’s hair. “I love you.” Beka clutches Yuri’s shirt; his breath shudders against Yuri’s shoulder. “I love you. Beka, I love you so much.”

 

The piroshki reheat easily.

Yuri takes a bite, grimaces. The carrots might have been a bit much. But the dough isn’t too tough.

He might not feed them to Grandpa Nikolai, but they’ll do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are so many wonderful fanon interpretations of Otabek's family. Maybe some day I will write a happier or more nuanced one.  
> For the purposes of this fic I ignored the fact that apparently Otabek is an Uzbek name, and assumed that the Altin family is ethnically Kazakh enough to generally have Kazakh names (according to brief internet research) and speak Kazakh at home. If I've made an unconscionable error, please let me know; I'm totally ignorant, but I do not at all intend to be a jerk.  
> Speaking of ignorance, I've never made piroshki. (Also I have no idea what the actual correct transliteration is. Spellcheck didn't want me to use a Z.) I read a few recipes, elided details and tried to sketch broad strokes. [This recipe](https://valentinascorner.com/meat-piroshki-recipe/) especially informed a lot of what I was picturing while writing. I think that mixing meat and vegetables is not standard -- Yuri is intentionally not using a standard recipe for these weird bastardized my-boyfriend-is-very-sad piroshki; it's about the process.  
> So far, Otabek is terribly upset in every story idea I have. I'm so sorry, bb. I think I'm having an adverse reaction to the common fanon version of Otabek where he is eternally patient and calm and good natured and perfect while Yuri freaks out all over the place. I don't intend to shit on anyone's headcanon, I just can't relate. Maybe some day I will write an Otabek who is cool and calm. (Don't hold your breath for it.)  
> Up next: a totally unnecessary coda/palate cleanser featuring secret MVP Nikolai.


	2. completely unnecessary coda featuring secret MVP Grandpa Nikolai

The phone rings two, three times before he can get to it. (Yuratchka keeps telling him if he got a cell phone he could keep it in his pocket, not even have to get up from his chair, but Nikolai likes the landline; he’s got an old flip-style phone that he uses scrupulously when traveling and turns off as soon as he’s home again, and it suits him just fine. His grandson would grumble and growl and throw his hands in the air in frustration. Nikolai supposes the boy must have learned stubbornness from somewhere.) “Hello?”

“Grandad. Hi.”

He had started to settle in the chair near the phone, but he tenses at the sound of the voice. “Yuratchka. What’s happened?”

“What? Nothing.” The voice on the line gives an unconvincing chuckle. “Why would you — I can’t just call to say hi?”

 _Of course you can, my dear. But you don’t. And you haven’t this time, either._ Worst possibilities run through his mind, a litany of injury and disaster. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s —” He sighs, and stops.

“Yuratchka.” The sound of his own voice almost startles him, dark as thunder. “Do I have to come to St Petersburg and hurt someone?”

“ _No_ , Grandad.” It isn’t good for his heart to hear Yuri sound so young and vulnerable. Even when he had been young and vulnerable, he almost never sounded like it. “It’s not — no. I’m okay, really. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

It’s not an answer. Nikolai tries not to let fear make him snap. “I am here, Yuratchka,” he says, as calm and patient as he can. “Tell me.”

“It’s just.” He sighs. “Beka’s family is so awful.”

“Oh.” It’s not what he had expected. He tries, guiltily, not to feel relieved.

“He talked with his mom this morning. Afterward I had to like talk him off a ledge — _not_ literally, don’t worry, he’s okay too. I mean.” He laughs, sharp and without humor. “Everything’s awful, but he’s as okay as he could be, I guess.”

“I see.” Otabek is a rather intense young man, who seems to feel things very strongly. Nikolai can understand why, if Otabek was upset, Yuri would be beside himself.

“He’s napping now, the cute bastard,” Yuri grumbles fondly, before his tone turns biting. “He was wrung out, Grandad. I don’t know what the hell she said to him. Just… yeah. So, like I said. I just. I wanted to hear your voice.”

“I understand.” Nikolai wishes Yuri was in the room with him; they’re both better at physical comfort than words. “I’m sorry that Otabek is having a hard time.”

“It sucks,” Yuri mutters. “So fucking much.”

“Yes, it does.”

Nikolai is not an expert on gay issues, in this world that’s changed so very much since he was young. What he does know, what he knew with unshakeable certainty even before it became clear that Anya could not fulfill her parental duties to her child, is that he loves his grandson, endlessly and without condition. Nikolai may worry, but he will never, under any circumstances, not love and support his Yuratchka.

There have been times that he has been ashamed of the way Anya has conducted her life, but even so he cannot imagine choosing to reject her; he cannot imagine not wanting to be there for her, in whatever way she will let him. Also, he cannot imagine any conduct more shameful than a parent willfully choosing to be cruel and cold to their child. It is for the best that he will never meet these Altins.

Otabek is a kind and decent young man. He is good to Yuri, and Yuri loves him. That makes him family.

“I want to come visit,” Yuri is saying. “It feels like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“Of course.” He saw them for Yuri’s birthday, and again just after Worlds. But he won’t complain if Yuri wants to visit again. “You and Otabek are welcome any time. Let me know when you are coming so I can stock the fridge.”

“Yeah.” It sounds like Yuri is smiling. “Yeah, that sounds perfect. I want to cook, a lot.”

 

 

 

(“We might be going to a wedding. What do you wear to a wedding when you think the bride is okay, but you kind of want to tell everyone else there to go fuck themselves with a chainsaw?”

_“Yuratchka.”_

“Sorry, Grandad. I’ll ask Viktor. He might have ideas. He used to be the best at making everyone else feel like worthless trash just from, like, the way he walks into a room…”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate it that Nikolai is always dead in fanfiction. He isn't *that* old. Anyway, I love him and wanted a counterpoint to the main part of the fic.  
> Is this self-indulgent moralizing? Yes. Do I feel bad about it? Nope.  
> Thank you for reading, hope you enjoy, I'd love your comments if you feel like leaving any :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I would love any comments or concrit you choose to leave. <3


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